State News Briefs: Ryan Braun named honorary chairman of the Wisconsin AIDS Walk

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Milwaukee Brewers’ outfielder Ryan Braun has been named the honorary chairman of this year’s Wisconsin AIDS Walk. It’s the largest annual fund-raiser for Wisconsin’s local H-I-V organizations, and has brought in 10-and-a-half million dollars over the last 22 years. Braun, the reigning National League M-V-P, says he’s proud to do what he can to raise awareness and support. The AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin provides resources for almost 66-hundred state residents who have the H-I-V virus. The center sponsors the walk each fall in Milwaukee. This year’s event will take place October sixth. Green Bay Packers’ linebacker Clay Matthews was the honorary chairman a year ago.

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Officials say it might cost over seven-thousand-dollars to recount the ballots in Van Wanggaard’s state Senate district. The recount begins today, after a canvass showed that the Republican Wanggaard lost by 834 votes to Democrat John Lehman on June fifth. Wanggaard and other Republicans have claimed extensive voter fraud – and the G-O-P has to win the recount to keep its previous majority in the Senate going into the November elections. Wanggaard lost by one-point-two-percent. And because of that margin, he’s is required to pay five-dollars per voting district, or 685-dollars in a Senate district that is entirely within Racine County. But County Clerk Wendy Christenson said it cost seven-thousand-dollars last year to recount 32-thousand ballots cast in David Prosser’s State Supreme Court victory. Today’s recount involves over twice as many ballots – and the state is giving them 10 business days to complete the process.

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Wisconsin health officials are looking for public comments on a preliminary plan to fight obesity. Among other things, the plan urges communities to tighten up their designs and zoning, so more people can walk or ride bicycles to work-and-school. It also encourages at least an hour a day of physical activity for kids – and allowing more time for workers to get their exercise. The state’s plan includes a number of goals – like reducing the percentage of obese adults from 27-percent to 24 by the year 2020. The plan also seeks to reduce the percentage of overweight or obese high school students from 23-to-21-percent – and increasing the numbers of adults eating fruit at least twice a day from 35-to-39 percent. The state Health Services Department is taking written comments on the plan until July 18th. To see the plan, you can log onto to the department’s Web site, accessible at Wisconsin-Dot-Gov.

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A group of Catholic sisters visited House Republican Paul Ryan’s office in Janesville yesterday, to oppose the G-O-P’s proposed cuts in Medicaid and social programs. Ryan was in Washington, but members of the social lobbying group Network dropped off an alternative budget they say would more closely reflect Catholic values. Ryan, a Catholic, has been criticized by some bishops for drafting a budget he says would re-work Medicare to keep it from going dry – and cut numerous programs that benefit the poor. The House Budget Chairman says the package is true to his Catholic faith. But the Network sisters’ group claims otherwise – and they’re making their point with a nine-state bus tour called “Nuns on the Bus” that also stopped in Milwaukee late yesterday. The sisters ate dinner with poor-and-homeless people at a church, while Network director Simone Campbell said how the G-O-P House budget would quote, “devastate people at the margins.” She said there needs to be “reasonable revenues for reasonable programs.” The group also plans to make the same point while touring a Catholic dental clinic in Milwaukee this morning. The House budget has gone nowhere in the Democratically-controlled Senate. And President Obama opposes it as well.

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